Works well, minor issues along the way but works out in the end.

Not so well, cannot get everything configured.

Still breaks frequently.

Sorry everyone, this isn't the best tutorial in the world, unfortunately I have been a little short on time, and I meant to get this up earlier.

This tutorial will show you how to make a more reliable BackTrack Live USB with Persistence as well as getting you set up to make a Multibootable Live USB if you want. Here we go!

1. Now, partition your USB, I used GParted from the Ubuntu Software Center. The first partition will be for BackTrack. It must a minimum of about 3.75gb and fat32 format. I went for 4gb because I also put Xiaopan on here.

2. Make sure your second partition is of type ext4(I believe ext2 or ext3 will also work) and label it casper-rw.

4. This is a great program, you can make your usb multiboot I you want, and even customize the boot menu in cool ways as you see fit, later.

5. Install BackTrack(BT) 5 with Multisystem without persistence onto the first partition.

6. Now, select BT and click on add persistence mode(the little floppy disk). This can be a small amount, I did 256 mb.

7. Then enter the partition of your usb that has BT on it and either delete the casper-rw file or copy it somewhere if you want to just make sure things go alright.

8. Now, when you boot, at the bottom of your normal list of boot options, there should be an option for persistence following your other BT options. When you boot wit this, everything you do should now be saved in the partition of the usb that you labeled casper-rw. If you select the normal BackTrack Text boot, this will not use your new persistence partition.

9. This way, also, in the event your persistence gets corrupt, you will still have access to your original live boot, without having to remake your live boot usb. You will just have to reformat your casper-rw partition with the same label.

(optional)10. After everything seemed to be in order I downloaded DiskInterals Linux Reader (http://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/) on Windows. Find your casper-rw partition and right click on it, save it as an image to your Windows. Now, in the event that your persistence gets corrupted on the casper-rw partition, you can just burn the image over your original casper-rw partition to recover it. I do this every so often when I've made a significant amount of alterations that I want saved. I just make a new image to replace the old one.

My set up:

8gb SanDisk USB
3 partitions (4gb fat32 for boot, 1.5gb ext4 for casper-rw, 1.5gb fat32 for casper-rw backup)
BackTrack and Xiaopan are both installed on the first partition (did not add a persistence partition for Xiaopan though I am sure you could if you wanted)

For now I am using two partitions, one for casper and one to preserve casper. Once I am confident enough that there are no issue I will likely just use the last partition for regular storage use. Though I am becoming increasingly more confident each time I boot without issues.

As of yet I have had no issues with BT. I have booted persistent and not persistent a dozen times and even shut them off improperly on purpose and attempted to break it in all the way I have done accidentally in the past and have had absolutely no errors or problems.

Prior to figuring this out, I could swear backtrack would break with persistence after every few times of booting cause something would go wrong, or I would hit a snag and have to turn it off improperly then killing it and forcing me to remake my live usb. I would always get the 'EXT2-fs (loop1): error: ext2_lookup: deleted inode' but this method seems to make backtrack's live usb with persistence much more stable and less fragile.

Please ask me if anyone has any questions or realize if I missed anything. I hope this helps all of those people who have gotten this error or had problems with it constantly breaking and being overly fragile. I would like to hear your feedback and how well it works for you as well.

Sure I plan on redoing this tutorial as soon as I can. School takes up most of my time at the moment. When vacation time hits, I will try to make either a video tutorial or picture based step-by-step tutorial, or both, ASAP. If you do not understand something though, please feel free to private message me and I will do my best to answer the questions and be more detailed. This may also help me to better format the tutorial when I get time to make a better version. Thank you

Dev TeamVIP

how would you smoosh that onto a 4 gig stick? all i have is a 4 gig thumb drive 3.7 something gigs ...... same way id like to only have 1 or 2 partitions tops so it works everytime and wont f up the usb stick

--- Double Post Merged, 21 Oct 2012 ---

ur second partition is of type ext4(I believe ext2 or ext3 will also work) and label it casper-rw. < is the ext a lunix thing what would you do if its windows 7

"5. Install BackTrack(BT) 5 with Multisystem without persistence onto the first partition." i tryed looking but didnt find "persistence" what does that refer to i have not used the install program you suggested yet so if its part of that i wouldnt know

Sorry for the super late reply. Anyway, so firstly if you want the persistence, you will need minimum 2 partitions, one for BT and one for the storage. Your persistence would likely be very tiny, if you could even fit it on there. You could attempt to fit your BT into 3.5GB, not sure of BT's exact size, I usually go with 3.75 to be safe.

Also, to use this method you will need a very small amount of space in that partition in addition to your BT to fit the very small casper-rw file when you first start the persistence. If you could manage all of this on 3.5GB and have your second partition(the EXT4 labeled "casper-rw") at .2GB then you might be able to make this work. 4GB would be cutting it close, might take some experimentation.

If I get time and a 4GB usb I will test it out, but if you can mess around with it, let me know what you find out.

As for the actual EXT partition formats, I believe any of them would work, though I used EXT4 and have yet to test the others. If you use them and they work please let me know, the more info the better so that I can help people in the future.

EXT is for Linux and without additional software I do not believe you would be able to make this format or read this format on your Windows OS. 90% of what I had done in the guide was on Ubuntu, only the 10th step, I believe it was, took place on Windows 7.

Also, to address your final question, the persistence allows you to boot into your live usb and save your work so that when you boot into it, anything you have done before will still be present. This is as opposed to a normal live usb where everything you have would only remain until the system is shut down or rebooted. Persistence can be added with a number of other programs or other methods, and you do not necessarily have to add it to a partition or add it in the manner. This method, although more complected that most, fixes most if not all of the fragility of BT with persistence and makes your live usb more stable so that you do not have to frequently reformat and remake your live usb.

If you do not actually want or need persistence then you do not need to partition your usb or follow this guide as their are much more simple methods out there.

I hope I was able to answer everything, please tell me if you have any additional questions or if you find out any new information.

Hello Thank you for the tutorial! Finally something that's works I was about to give up on using persistence. . Just a question. I configured my drive just like you have yours with xiaopan installed in the same partition as backtrack.. say I wanted to make xiaopan persistent what size would the new partition be and how would I label it or would they use the same casper-rw?

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